ONLINE advertising has evolved and is now a rival to its older sibling, television.

According to a recent study by market research company Gfk and Google, which tracked consumer responses to eight different advertising campaigns, online advertising has a higher return on investment, encouraging far greater sales than television.

As one of the brands featured in the study, Cadbury has already seen success from the results, generating double the amount of what it spent on digital advertising with its online strategy.

There is now hard evidence of a change in the advertising status quo with brands looking at online advertising as the safe option in terms of delivering results.

Unlike television stations, which can only show a certain amount of advertisements between programmes, and within the broadcast range, the internet knows no such boundaries and can be accessed on a global scale.

Add in advancing technology that allows users to fast forward through, or omit adverts entirely, it’s no wonder that brands are looking for an alternative.

Even Yahoo is taking steps to ensure it is at the forefront. In a time when its directors are attempting to rebuild their once leading company, a £168.7m deal to buy data-mining and market analysis service Interclick, announced just last week, may just be what they need.

Advertising online has the added bonus of being able to offer an insight into the buying habits of consumers.

Sales might be boosted during a new television campaign but it is hard to prove who the customers are, aside from the fact that they bought the product and like to watch television.

With online advertising brands can track whether the people who clicked the advert continued to browse and any sales boosts can be directly linked to the advert. This allows brands to see exactly how many people have been directed to their website as a result of the advert and whether or not their current advertising strategy is working.

In short, brands need to take note and develop new, enticing internet campaigns which will allow them to stay ahead of the game.

INTERNET entrepreneur Ben Hatton is founder and managing director of digital agency Rippleffect. Follow Rippleffect on Twitter @rippleffected